One doesn’t want to be a ghoul, but since Daniel Lanois and Neil Young just made a record together and seem to be reasonably tight, the question must be asked: did the two of them ever have that conversation?

Both of them have survived recent, close brushes with death, after all — Lanois’s motorcycle crash this past June whilst working on Young’s Le Noise album, Young’s brain aneurysm several years prior. Both are lifelong workaholics who appear to have taken on greater workloads since confronting mortality head-on. Surely, then, a chat of the “So, yeah, I’m gonna make the most of the gift of life” variety must have taken place.

“I did have that conversation with Neil Young,” confirms Lanois, during a recent soiree held for journalists and radio folks at his new studio at Dundas and Roncesvalles, the Temple. “I was always embarrassed about being a workaholic through my whole life.

“People would take weekends off or tell me ‘Monday’s a bank holiday and, of course, Friday I’ve got the barbecue’ and blah, blah, blah and I’m always, like: ‘How come I have no inclination to do any of this?’ I’d pay no attention to the markers of time. I was just working all the time.

“So I talked to Neil Young, who’s crazier than me with work, and I asked him, ‘Do you ever go through this?’ And he says: ‘Yeah, of course. These are markers of time as determined by other people. We don’t need to operate by them.’ ”

Lanois — a gracious host who was earlier most insistent that everyone visiting the Temple have “a whisky and a beer” — is certainly throwing himself into his new project, Black Dub, with great gusto, nervously making the promotional rounds with uncharacteristic diligence for a shy studio rat and keeping his production schedule clear for the next six months or so to tour with the band.

He knows he’s onto something, though, which is why he’s invited all these people over to hear some of the record, a “supergroup” affair made with esteemed jazz drummer Brian Blade, bassist Daryl Johnston and a 22-year-old belter named Trixie Whitley. The latter, the daughter of the late singer/songwriter Chris Whitley, was the catalyst for Black Dub. Lanois just had to do something with her voice.

“She came up in a house that had a lot of the right music playing, so she has a great education and, as you can hear, a great talent,” he says. “I was already playing with Brian Blade and I thought she was a powerhouse and there was something there that was special, so I decided to record a couple of songs just to see how it would go. And it seemed to go well so we just kept going and finished an album . . .

“There’s something going on there and there hasn’t been a lot of manipulation from offices. It’s quite a pure form. We made the record we wanted to make.”

As the name might suggest, Black Dub and its self-titled debut album — out Tuesday and previewed during Lanois’s Nathan Phillips Square all-nighter for Nuit Blanche last month — bear the stamp of Lanois’s longtime affection for Jamaican dub reggae.

American blues, R&B and gospel also play into the mix, but all of those influences are twisted into a collective, mutant form by the band’s improv-schooled playing and Lanois’s brain-bubbling recording savvy. The result is an engaging mix of out-there head spaces and earthly soul musics that, more often than not, features the not-unknown-for-long Whitley’s gutbucket alto out in front.

It’s not exactly mainstream, but it’s also grounded enough that Lanois’s simple hope that the single “I Believe in You” find a home somewhere on radio isn’t a total pipe dream.

The work ethic that he lays out in his new autobiography, Soul Mining — a humble read he describes as “the rise of a French-Canadian kid through work” — dictates that he’s going to do everything in his power to get Black Dub heard, in any case. And probably even more so than he would have before his accident.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever spent any time in a hospital, but I hadn’t. When I got out of there, I thought, ‘I’m lucky to be alive,’’ says Lanois. “A couple of feet over this way or that might have broken my spine or damaged my brain, but I kept all that intact.

“I’ve always been productive, but I want to be especially productive now. I can always go and sit in the coffee shop and eat a doughnut, but to be hanging out with the likes of Brian Blade and Trixie Whitely, these are really rare moments and I want to make sure I really maximize what I was put on the planet for.”

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